rapturerebornmmorpgfandomcom-20200216-history
Part 43
Sitemap --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- - More interesting items/ideas for a Bioshock Rapture MMORPG --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- - Part 43 --- --- --- --- --- Vita-Chambers (sorry they wont be a game convenience turned into a Plot 'crutch' in THIS game) : in MMORPG can repair only a limited amount of damage (but enough to make it worth a mission-divergence to use one - except any working ones will probably be quickly brought back to the City and old ones might not work too well - besides Splicers using them as lavatories). Their original function was to revitalize you (different from ADAM methods). The Resurrection Upgrade was still experimental and many of the machines have downgraded their operating abilities due to lack of proper maintenance (theres also that little matter of the genetic lockout being integral - though they worked for Delta and I doubt he was a relative of Ryan's (or *dramatic pause* Was He ????? ) ). Since the game is alot less 'fatal' various other alternatives will be available. The enclosure would make a nice stylized phone booth (there must be alot of junked ones by now in Rapture). They are pretty much weapon proof (made of the same magic materials the windows are made of ?? Polycarbonate ?) so might make a good 'panic booth' for one person. --- --- --- Bathyspheres - just a tiny more deluxe/expensive bus ride ?? The Bathysphere system allegedly had been locked down with 'genetic keys' (when nothing was really hackproof), but what about all the private subs ((Austen Streamliner Submarine ad in the Ryan Amusements Gift Shop -- "Best of Year 1952" )) or the subs used for maintenance all around Rapture ?? Passengers didnt steer the Bathyspheres - they were automated, so why lock down the whole system (and before we ever knew anything about Trains or Trolleys in BS2)? What exactly were all those people who wanted to leave going to do up on that Lighthouse 300 miles across a cold stormy sea from anywhere ?? Just another plot whack-you-in-the-face-with-it 'fact' to justify mentioning the genetic linkage between Jack and Ryan. . How convenient would taking a Bathysphere be ? : - I see (dead people) very few access holes (docks?) at the Stations (so they get delayed waiting in line for their chance to load/unload - the thing has to go up, go down, wait for people to get off, get on, along with any additional waiting in between -- all to service just a handful of people). Very poor thru-put densities for an alleged city-wide 'transit' system. - I saw schedules. How frequently could they be getting to every destination (and both directions)? and doesnt that imply scheduled stops AT every Station along the route before getting to a passengers final one - so not exactly like a Taxi-cab. Does that also mean that many of them have to run empty (as real busses have to). - Seperate stations for seperate routes - very absurd to have to walk between Stations to get across Rapture. Even Cavemen knew what a 'Transit Hub' is. - Looked like the Bathyspheres had nice red plush seating for about 8 people, but wouldnt that make it like Car-Pooling/Ride-Sharing -- stopping at every one elses stops along the route (unless you hired/chartered it only for yourself/party) ? Justifies my solution of the Trolleys being the primary Metro transit system and not the limited 'deluxe' Bathyspheres. I also redesigned the Bathysphere Stations with many additional (simultaneouusly used) loading docks to facilitate more realistic traffic. If this system replaced the Atlantic Express, then it wasnt the Bathysperes but the efficiency of the Metro Trolley which caused it. --- --- --- ADAMolics Anonymous - Hello, my name is Jack and I have an ADAM addiction..... : Alcoholics Anonymous founded 1935 Some of the Accu-VOX recordings (and other things) imply that there was a 'rush' you got when taking ADAM, but others mention that much of the dependancy was from constant use for peoples Jobs (and their competition worries) or everyday useful convenience (constant use by ordinary consumers) or later personal security measures. This also implies a LARGE supply was available for use to be so widespread and by significant numbers of the population. Substantial use/overuse/abuse by a person caused deterioration which additional ADAM only slowed. When ADAM levels dropped in the body, the genetic modifications enabling the 'powers' and 'improvements' started malfunctioning and even interfered with normal body functions (hence the tumors and deformations). Fontaine did not care much about side effects on customers, but Ryan would ask the researchers if features could be added to tonics/plasmids to help repair previous damage and prevent new damage (maybe this was also one purpose for the Vita-Chambers which might business-wise be more exclusive, besides removing a disrupting factor in HIS City which was damaging HIS economy and ruining HIS Dream --- use those reasons if you believe that absolutist "'Altruism' is the ultimate evil" they paint him with). Little Sisters to multiply the ADAM production must have begun fairly early to meet this demand - then there is a question of whether the need (destitute children) for Fontaine's "farm" orphanages were caused by economic distress, versus family casualties caused by ADAM addiction/insanity/violence(and secondary economic disruption effects) - which is "chicken before the egg"). If there are frequently Withdrawl Symptoms (psychological or physiological) for 'normal' usage levels which were severe enough, then it would have been quickly known by ALOT of people who themselves would try to avoid using ADAM, or for 'recreational' purposes use alternatives (all the LEGAL drugs which could give similar effects and which might in Rapture be easier/cheaper to get). --- Fear and Loathing in Rapture (drugs and how they effect Players) : Ive seen some interesting and very odd scenes (ex - Far Cry 3) which show the possibilities for 'trippy' interactive game scene situations. In THIS MMORPG, Player Creators can choreograph complex 'situations' for Flashbacks and other immersive presentations and creating a wide selection of options and effects could be made possible (again - the TOOLS are the critical thing needed to make this possible for Players to employ their imaginations on the modular game engine). New Rapture would not have a prohibition of drug use (still being largely Libertarian in its culture). There would be Personal Responsibility for their use/misuse (as there was in Old Rapture despite the game's "No Laws" BS). BS2 mentions ADAM products being sometimes used for a 'recreational' use (the Novel talks about it also). Splicers Cut holes in the head to get at the Pineal Gland ...and then theres Pure Adrenochrome.. - This opens up various visual/auditory cue effects (as well as modification to Player's actions) which could be visited on the Player by things they interact with. Example is the 'drunk' effects you get drinking 2 bottles of booze in a row in the Solo games. ( Hmmm, I recall bizaare effects in a game called "Rise of the Triad" long long ago...). Such Effects would be a little more persistent in the MMORPG (with real impairments to functioning, etc..) and would make another variation to the Players experience to haveto adapt to their impairments. Role-playing ADAM addicted Splicers and showing the simulated effects of ADAM use or the Withdrawl (I can imagine starting to see things crawling around the edge of your vision or blackouts and a variety of sensory distortions (imagine of you had to have a fire-fight in that BS1/BS2 drunk blurred vision). Similarly the 'positive' effects somehow being represented - what visually indicates 'feelin fine' ?? This is actually a whole area of gaming which could be expanded significantly (and would take hundreds of imaginitive Players to explore creating 'good' new effects (and build on each others work) - the Game Companies only have resources to barely scratch the potential). --- --- --- Rapture is a whole Immersive Practical World - try not to make it some fluffy 'it works cuz it just does' game : Being Sci-Fi based with alot of Real World mechnisms in play, there Lots of real things to learn throughout the game (including various role/duty Quests/Missions where you are exposed to Raptures workings), BUT ALOT which you WONT have to learn to figure out what to do -- you likely will already know -- physics work like real physics, systematic mechanisms work properly, cause and effect, NPCs act from real motives/reasons, etc... Arbitrary fantasy 'facts', impossible physics and illogic will be minimized. Things in the game can be expected to work alot like Real World things (NO pixie-dust or the use of the word 'cuz' to explain most of it). There will still be simplifications, and mundane details will stop at a certain depth (a practicality both for trying to simulate it, and the boredom-factor for Players). --- --- --- --- Minecraftian Combinational Behaviors (and beyond): Another area to explore for this game is to have versatile in-game Player Created machines, built up out of simpler functional parts (ie- actually useful loot..). Minecraft Players have come up with all kinds of interesting things (beyond the game creator's expectations) to make quite complex things happen in Minecraft by placing and combining block's interactions. The Minecraft developers are expanding the available building blocks/interactions to greatly further this ability (smart). One difference here (this MMORPG) would be once you put a good assembly of 'Parts' together (and they bahave a certain desireable way), you 'unitize' them and create a new 'second-order' (custom) building block 'part' (in Minecraft terms you would be creating a new Smelting/Enchantment formula, which last I heard they dont do in-game). This of course requires a much more complex object model (employing lots of interaction with inter-object game mechanics and physics, and the 'parts' have their own 3D shapes). It is breaking out of the simple 'block' system/game mechanics which Minecraft is based on, and into the Object system the MMORPG uses. (I would expect Minecraft to eventually have some 'machine' blueprint system which will automatically place a Player's pattern of blocks verbatum in the game world - but it will still afterwards be made up of a bunch of individual blocks). A new 'second-order' building block 'part' would programatically be simplified (via auto-generated behavior scripting) to eliminate the overhead of simulating all its sub-block's (inner workings). More and more complicated mechanisms could be built in turn from the new blocks (WITHOUT placing every tiny block, as you largely tediously and crudely do in Minecraft). Fully fuctional 'new' machines could thus be built for the game and tie in to different uses (held by Players, added to the active scenery, even vehicles). The game's repair activities are facilitated because whatever is built up from parts can be broken back down into parts (given proper skill and tools). This all is a complex extension of my previously mentioned MMORPGs Object Fabrication system -- my original Object Repair/Fabrication which is more 2D workbench-interface oriented (more like Minecraft's "smelting"). This new extension is also related to the in-built terrain and used in the "Repair/Rebuild Rapture" part of the game, which employs systemized interconnects/attributes/features/utilities/portals built into the terrain structure (which is all made of objects itself and highly modifiable). New is 'Rigging' in real-time situations - objects built up/assembled by Players and their 'Team' NPCs in the terrain -- versus 'Fabrication' which has largely canned formulas/templates for what individual Objects can be created (the formula creation is a whole seperate artificial process). Even better (gamewise) if Riggings can be done easily/simply 'ad hoc' in-the-field combining Objects to overcome and solve game obstacles. ( Example- some jammed door with all the goodie behind it resists all manual attempts to force it open -- lets setup a power-jack rigged to force it open - we got all the parts needed, set this part here and brace it like this, and connect that, and ...). The assembly line machines/process I foresaw for some of the MMORPG businesses would have elements of this kind, where placement in the terrain allowed machine sections to be linked/adjusted together to perform the desired overall task, and for one machine to 'feed into' another. An interesting aspect of this recombining parts is the visual representatation in-game when the 'engineered' object is seen. The building blocks have their own shapes (supposedy related to what they do) and the combination would be glued/stitched together visually (possibly quite ugly, as well as a drain on Rendering resources). So there should be some practical method (programming magic) to melt the assembly of parts together and simplify its shape. An easy default way is to 'blackbox' it - to have a simple rectangular enclosure (option shapes like tubes/prisms likewise) to represent the object with whatever external connections links protruding on its surface and its internals hidden. Rigging doesnt do this, as the parts are meant to remain seperate (even temporary) while functioning. . An Inventors Workbench simulation would be a good target for a tablet/smartphone App because of its limited self-contained server-independant nature, and simple drag-n-drop manipulation interface which Players can use to assemble things, and then run 'tests' to see if they do what the Player wants. Wizards of various kinds and a library of existing combination patterns would speed up such work (to avoid constantly 're-inventing the wheel' - available 'known' patterns the result of 'Research' ). . Again, like many things in the MMORPG, various activities are optional (a Player need not ever touch the Fabrication system or even the higher level 'Rigging' mechanism). Instead of making that 'ad hoc' power-jack machine to force the door, you can : ignore it as not-doable, or try to blast it open hoping the roof wont come down on you, or have a Team NPC take a cold chisel to the metal for 10 hours trying to beat your way through it (or just explore further to see if there is another path in past it). There are multiple ways of doing the same thing throughout much of the game. --- --- --- --- Bodily Functions in Rapture : We had our toilets in Rapture, but never did anything with them (Duke Nuken though crude at least delved into this more). Probably should be one of those categories of 'optional' Player activities (but with positive effects if you take effort to do them...) How hard would it be for NPCs to be scripted with such behaviors (--- no different than anything else) For some people's sensibilities we can again have that 'green mist' which descends upon us (as when we violently murdered Litle Sisters in the Solo Bioshock games...) Im sure there will/can be alot of crude humor available in the game. --- --- --- Rapture's Particle Collider (used in lots of types of technical research) : - Helped develop the bio-circuitry technology (used for The Thinker) - converting biological circuitry to 'hardware by bombarding them with various ions and etchants to form complex miniature circuitry. - Electron microscope (spotted in Persephone medical areas) - Weapons development (since they weigh many tons, might work as a 'fixed' weapon installation) - Found the Higgs Boson Particle 50 years earlier than the Surface did, but then lost it in the Laundry - brought about new theory about disappearance of socks (and that Quantum Entanglement stuff). --- --- --- --- Splicer Weirdness (you can do alot with insanity) : - "Big Dada" - yet another 'boss' to encounter - a fairly generic 'local boss' small Faction/gang situation for a Quest/Mission. But I like the cute name. Maybe wears a diving helmet as a sign of authority (which for comical effect impairs his movement and firing straight as it is a bit unwieldy - and/or he meets a real Big Daddy and has a problem. I suppose there could be a 'Big Mama' also somewhere. - Splicer cult that worships Ryans Face carved into the side of Mt Ryan -- and it turns out THEY were the ones who carved it (and no, it doeesnt turn out to be a puny little stonehenge miniature thing seen out a fake window like in Spinal Tap). Unfortunately the profiles resemblance to Ryan isnt really evident except from where they live. - Splicer boss who thinks he IS the god Apollo - saw a statue one time and the image stuck/emerged thru the Splicer's insanity (Splicer fails miserably in acting out the delusional role, really bad toga, etc..). Thinks he owns 'Apollo Square', yet is not located anywhere near it. - Its not inconeivable that there are Splicers who worship the Almighty `Seaslug. --- --- --- What IF Andrew Ryan had been a Nazi (what IF Superman...) : Old SNL skit (or was it "Fridays" ?) Then WW2 would have been won by Germany who would then control the World and Ryan would have no need to built Rapture (except maybe to have called his giant Death-Ray that....). Begs the question of 'what if Hitler had built 'Rapture' 10 years earlier then Ryan did ??? (hmmmm sounds like one of those 'Mission' type subplots (and it turns out to be something absurd that deranged (or very bored) Splicers dreamed up ... seems there is alot of those) --- --- --- Google me this Batman .... : Somebody will probably add a Google Map of the MMORPG's expanded Rapture. Most of the major buildings/terrain will be the same across all the World Servers (because of the Seed Maps used to give the auto-generators something cohesive to start with). Much more detailed than that and there will be differences - undefined sections, different minor buildings, and business locations/names (part of the semi-randomization to prevent players "Simply looking it up on the Internet" to solve Missions/Quests). --- --- --- Too Cute to Live - Little Sisters so cute they would make Barney the Purple Dinosaur vomit : Expand on Little Sister theme - for Players' amusement (not lame fanfic --> amazing 3D presentations) How trained - cattle prods never mentioned, for some reason Extracting ADAM - you REALLY dont want to know. Those Air Vent tubes - skinned knees a major complaint - regeneration doesnt mean its not painful. "Look MR Bubbles, that Angel looks like raspberry jammies." Rumor - Fontaines Lil Sisters Orphanages got so crowded they had to start hanging em up on hooks in closets, place started looking like a meat packing plant. Actually there were alot more Little Sisters than available Big Daddies, and many also did not condition well for the "Corpse ADAM Rrecovery Process" (CARP), so they were 'stored' in secure locations and used to generate ADAM (Likely also there often were not enough Corpses for the 'conditioned' Little Sisters to utilize.) --- --- --- Was McClendon going into the Color TV Business ??? : http://www.game-archivist.com/rapture/img/museum/photos/fullsize/Screen_Stand_By_Blue.jpg The above picture indicates use for color TV transmission, was found in the Minervas Den DLC. Every TV we saw in Rapture was B&W but by 1958 (when the excrement hit the impeller blades) TV technology would have been ready to move forward a step and likely would have been a product that sold en-masse. The new camera equipment probably would have been expensive because of the limited production (Rapture never had more than a few dozen channels) Since Rapture used a TV cable system (radio waves dont go thru water very well) and Color TV uses largely the same signal system, at least there would be no expensive relaying of all those cables. --- --- --- Rapture Chess has no Pawns (or Kings) : Play this game that became popular as part of a publicity stunt sponsored by Sinclair Metals (Sinclair who knew it was really a joke - he understood that in the Real World there would always be 'Pawns') --- In-Game Mini-Game ??? A demonstration with "The Thinker" playing Rapture Chess was given as a publicity stunt by Rapture Central Computing. --- --- --- Idea : Advice to and from your NPC Team (and other avenues) as to what Missions/Activities you would prefer at a particular time (or in general) : You set 'Preferences' and suggestions are made (brought to your attention - filtered) that should fit the specified profile. Some days you just want 'light'/'quick' adventuring and you would get suggestions leading to locations/missions of that flavor. Other days you want something of greater difficulty (and effort) and possibly higher payoffs. Various 'Roles' the Player may assume (like a Volunteer Constable) open up various common missions which at other times the Player might not want to deal with. Other times the Player may be more in a mood for 'salvaging' or 'repair' activities when less exciting situations are desired. Rapture in the MMORPG is a huge place with things of all sorts going on all the time. General Player Preferences will hint to your 'Team' what kind of equipment to maintain (when they do AI activities on automatic - so you dont have to Micro-manage them). An expansion of this is 'preferred' solutions and tactics to get your 'Team' on-the-same-page about how things should 'go down' when various situations come up. --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- How big a hit did Rapture's Population actually take ?? : Assumption - that virtually noone is left in Rapture ??? Yet we only saw a small fraction of the City in either game, and there seemed to be many people stil alive where we did go. Many of those places we went were not places ordinary people would go in an emergency situation or to pursue survival. Peopel aslo get very good at hiding when trouble walks their way. How many people did Rapture actually lose during the Civil War ? Ryan (wanting to preserve HIS City) would have gone to major efforts to keep normal people alive for the many months that the 'Civil War' dragged on. How isolated was the fighting ? Ryan would try to isolate the enemy to prevent them from destroying the rest of Rapture. By the time of BS1 Atlas's minions were largely cut-off in Apollo Square, and others of the revolutionaries were removed from other parts of the City and were dumped there. This begs the question of why not simply kill them - Fontaine/Lamb would have. Ryan must've had a plan to get a 'Cure' developed and to forgive many who were being misled by 'Atlas' hile under the influence of ADAM. Crazy Splicers wandering the streets and halls (all over) BS1 Ryan calls for Jack to be intercepted and the more adventurous (wanting the Bounty 1000 ADAM) came out of the woodwork. Splicers how many people actually reached the unstable state (there are all degress, and with a shortage many people who previously used it would no longer be underits influence). It actually doesnt take that many to dirupt society or a City, and Fontaine/Atlas's minions may actually have been very few hundreds. Splicer insanity how many people killed directly Suicide Murder Fighting Indirectly : Famine and starvation, poisonings Accidents in a deteriorating/disrupted environment Sickness, Medical care limits Disruptions of normalcy, shift to subsistance economy and activities Backto the farm Avoiding the violence Self protection Continuance of critical resources vital Outside areas were probably not touched, but if they had dependancies for needed resources the breakdown in order/transportation/supply would have severe impact. Population may have started hoarding neccessities early Refugees and groups assisting/protecting, might have been overwhelmed (largely it was upto Ryan to keep things running). Isolationists - cutting themselves off from the craziness, if they could. Self-Sufficient required. Congregation around sources of critical resources - Food - farms/fisheries/stockpiles - Power air/water/heat/electricity still operating due to Hesphaestus Factions grabbing power in the vaccuum left by Ryan's death, gangs taking advantage of disorder, before. Resources became targets Somewhat later - Predations by Sofia Lamb (she tried to steal children from areas outside of her control after using all the ones within reach up first) How many people did she 'do away with' who refused to be subject to her control ?? How many did she get to 'volunteer' for her 'First Utopian' project and any other before that. --- --- --- Snap Gurgle and Pop - sound of ADAM Plasmid being applied : How fast does your body reconfigure itself during the process (more complex changes take longer ?) Bioluminescent effects (glowing veins) added as a sales gimmick ?? Amount of ADAM created T-Cells in your body likely effects speed of transition (against extent of changes - Incinerate combat tonic flame thrower required more changes than the Bic Lighter early consumer-grade versions). State of your body - the transition uses up resources and energy, so eat a hearty meal beforehand and dont Splice within an hour of eating (or you will get worse than cramps). --- --- --- --- --- "City Project" Assets (another game data type) : From game design solution "issue decisions via Voting by players" (as well as AI automatic default behaviors of the 'City') -- it seems there is yet ANOTHER Player Created Asset - "City Project" - which will have TEMPLATES created/submitted/vetted/installed as per the usual process which facilitates the City's governance. Voting issues are created from these Templates in-game to be used for City Votes. Basically they are high-level control for the 'City' NPCs, and their interactions with Players. Built into a City Project Asset will be : --- The logic of what must be done to other game objects/locations and the final result - what activities/tasks/sub-projects are needed, and what resoutce needs/factors/priorities/what other related-activities might block the project's being accomplished. Project usually have a sequence of sub-projects/tasks, often which are prerequisits for the next step. Do A then Do B then Do C ... Various situations/events can cause the project to be aborted or delayed or put up for being cancelled (another Vote) --- Calculations of cost and availability of tools/materials and risk (including for incremental steps/stages/phases of the project) --- Verbage describing what the 'City Project' is and does (to use for descriptions shown to Players in ballots/etc..) Classification of the Project so that when other more important Issues are pending Vtes then others get delayed to later Voting Ballots. They also can fall into different Voting bodies (some are decided by Represenative Subsets of the population (one of those Prestige positions Players will be encouraged to explore - ie - Councilman). --- What parameters there are to allow issue 'fill-in' variations (as specifics for an instance for a specific vote on a specific issue - anything that simply wastes money usually gets a big Nay vote). Some Player (in-game) makes a 'City Councel' proposal and uses one of the many available 'City Projects' pattern/templates and fills in the specifics. Might be as simple as "Fix the Trolley Station near my Business at XYZ" (filling it out is largely a 'Wizard' interface showing available multiple choices). --- A basic desireability for the Cities NPC population (if Players disinterested and dont take part in Voting on it, some reasonable vote would be cast by the NPCs) and factors that might adjust the decision (ie- Frequent Splicer Attacks on City Center increases a general desire to increas Security...) Some conmination of factors that increase/decrease the priority as a general measure. --- Definitions of what constitutes completion/success for reporting (milestones, relevant statistics, etc..) Some City Projects deal with assigning incentives to Players (in defined roles or in general) to get certain things done (No one wants to be a City Constable? Reward more Prestige brownie points now to induce Player to do it... Rat infestation out of control? - raise the Bounty on rat-skins). Some decisions like that could have simple default programmed logic for automatic adjustments (for when Players are disinterested in the Vote decision process). Notice that I expect some aspects of the game (like the Voting) WILL BE ignored by many Players and so automatics will be in place to keep it functioning in a reasonable non-destabilizing fashion. - Once an INSTANCE of a City Project is created (activated by a Vote) it is an Entity attached to the City Resource management which controls various NPCs and their activities and resources. The sequence of sub-project tasks in turn may have sub-steps/tasks to be accomplished (more generalized tasks which can be reused in many different 'Projects'. A Hierarchical Planner (not Rocket Science) can programaricly run this kind of behavior controls. Regular reports of progress (Project may take along time to complete) can be generated from the given specifications and the actual results. --- --- --- --- --- . . .